Structural Design: Loadbearing
(13037873) BE1380 – Cityspace Structural Forces The structure of a building is the all encompassing external environment of the building, it is the base of the building and what keeps it together. The strength of the building depends on how the building materials resist the forces and loads applied to them. The stability of the structure is how it resists to movement and if it can stay upright. The force shows if the building can keep its shape under whatever circumstances. The loading, which is arguably the most important aspect of the structure, is the forces that get applied to the building. Dead load is the self-weight of the structure and doesn't change, live loads is what gets applied to the building like weather, furniture, people etc. The structure of the building can make these loads be distributed throughout or concentrated. Stress on the structure can come in tensile, compressive and shear stress. Tensile stress is where a structural element will resist external loading and start to stretch. Compressive stress is when the structural element is compressed or squashed because of external loads. Finally shear stress happens when and external load is applied to an element and the element resists causing one part to slide past the other. When compressive and tensile stress is applied to an element it normally increase or decreases the length of the element the change in length divided by the original length gives you the measure of strain on the element. In my building I can imagine that the dead load is very heavy as the building is very big and has a very large square footage. Also I can imagine the live loads being very impressive as it has a dining area seating 100 people, accommodation for a lot of students, seventy fitness stations and many multi-purpose rooms etc. This will provide a large live load on the building and with it being a one storey building it must of being designed to uniformly distribute the loads to the walls and into the foundations otherwise the first floor would come under a lot of tensile stress and most likely buckle. 'Forces on a Building and their effects' Overall movement in a building vertically is caused by the dead weight of the building and its loading while the horizontal movement of th building is mainly a result of wind hitting all the sides of the building. Deformation is the change in shape or size of an object and in the verticality of a building defamation tends to make the columns or walls bend and buckle under the stress of the loads. Horizontally defamation can occur in a vertical cantilever or a floor where under the load the wall or floor will start to bend and buckle. 'Behavious of Building Elements under load' The wall: Under vertical loading the wall may crush or buckle. Crushing is simply caused by too much stress on the wall and can be avoided by giving the wall the appropriate thickness. You can also cause the wall to bend if there is more load on one side of the wall. Buckling occurs when again the thickness is too small for the height of the wall and it just can't distribute the load efficiently, fixed by simply giving the wall the correct thickness for its height.